Snowden abandons asylum bid

Notwithstanding broad popular and political support in Moscow for granting asylum to Edward Snowden, the self-admitted leaker of Washington's most closely held global espionage secrets, Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have ruled it out.

Mr Snowden withdrew his Russian asylum request because of a demand that he stop harming US interests by leaking documents, as countries from Latin America to Europe brushed off his bid for refuge, Bloomberg reported.

''Theoretically, Snowden could stay in the Russian Federation, but with one condition - that he give up his intention to carry out anti-American actions,'' Mr Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. ''As far as we know, he refuses to do so.''

Purportedly still ''marooned'' in the transit lounge at Sheremetyevo International Airport, Mr Snowden had made a formal application for asylum on Sunday.

Russian officials claimed not to know where he was staying - ''she didn't say and I didn't ask,'' an airport consular official said after receiving the asylum application from Mr Snowden's WikiLeaks handler, Sarah Harrison.

Of the 20 nations in which Mr Snowden had sought asylum, only Norway has so far confirmed reception of an application.

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Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman Frode Andersen said: ''It is probably from him and it is allegedly signed by him, but we have no way of checking that.''

Mr Snowden is in his second week at the airport, though there has been no confirmed sighting of him and his options seem to be narrowing. Ecuador's enthusiasm for his case is fading rapidly and Mr Putin appears to be bent on playing with American sensitivities, but not obliging Mr Snowden at the same time.

Amid such uncertainty, the cocksureness that was a hallmark of Mr Snowden's early comments is fading too. A statement issued in his name by WikiLeaks on Monday was marked by crankiness and a sense of disbelief that the US would play hardball in its efforts to have him handed over.

The statement, posted on the WikiLeaks website, denounced President Barack Obama for reducing Mr Snowden to a ''stateless person'' by revoking his passport and took Vice-President Joe Biden to task for pressuring governments not to take Mr Snowden.

''The Obama administration has now adopted a strategy of using citizenship as a weapon - although I'm convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.''

In filing for asylum in Russia and Norway, Mr Snowden also gave local officials a list of 17 other countries in which he would wish to request asylum: Austria, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Germany, India, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Poland, Spain, Switzerland and Venezuela.

Mr Putin, himself a stranger to human rights as most would like to see them practised, spoke as if he were the patron saint of activism. ''Considering that [Snowden] considers himself a human rights activist and a fighter for human rights, he probably doesn't plan to stop this work, so he should choose a host country and head there,'' he said.